Free On the Move by Catherine Vale

off.
    “Run, Daphne! Go!” Another rock came at her and she threw her arm up. The rock hit her wrist and she felt the sickening crack of breaking bones.
    Suddenly someone was lifting her to her feet. She craned her neck, looking up at the guard. A large gash ran across his forehead and he blinked as blood ran into his eyes.
    “Run. Go. I will fight.” The guard stepped between her and the gang of raiders.
    She was dizzy with pain, her ankle throbbing. It wouldn’t hold her weight and she thought it was broken too. She took one hobbling step, then another, before falling to the stones again. The world went gray around the edges, a wave of nausea crashing through her. All she could do was close her eyes.
    Someone grabbed her arm and a fresh bolt of pain brought her head up and she stared into the eyes of a man wearing Western clothes, jeans and boots, a white-buttoned shirt. A hat shaded his face, but she could tell he wasn’t a villager.
    She looked wildly around for the guard, caught a brief glimpse of him before the men engulfed him, and then she lost sight of him. But she heard his cries and shouts, the sounds of his club hitting flesh.
    “You’re Addison James?” Without waiting for an answer he lifted her and she felt the bones of her arm rubbing together. This time she did vomit, most of it hitting the man who held her.
    “Please…” She swiped at her mouth, then tried to punch the man. “Let go. My arm. It’s broken.”
    He looked at her as if it didn’t matter he was crushing her arm. But he let go, grabbing her other arm, pulling her down the steep steps of the ruins.
    “Let me go. What the hell are you doing?”
    “Rescuing you from these savages, woman. What the hell do you think?”
    The accent was Australian or New Zealand. But at the moment it meant nothing, other than she was being taken further and further from her home, from Griffin.
    “No! I live here…I don’t need to be rescued!” She pulled against him, but his grip was like steel. He pulled her off the last tier of the ruins and into the jungle.
    Addison had no leverage to fight him. The man was taller than she was, heavy with muscles, and he knew where he was going. She wasn’t able to stand on her own, much less run from him.
    “Please, stop! Let me explain.”
    He turned suddenly, pulling her against him. “Ever heard of the Stockholm Syndrome? You get brainwashed, ya know? Ya start thinking they’re looking out for you. But they’re not. You’re not right in the head anymore, can’t think straight. We’ll get you back home where you belong, you’ll see. This will all just be a bad dream.”
    To her shock and surprise he picked her up, slinging her over his shoulder. Behind them she heard more men running down the path toward them. They surged ahead, slashing the jungle with their machetes. She cringed, wondering what had happened to the guard, if Daphne had escaped.
    Then her mind went to Griffin. They were taking her away from the man she loved, from the man whose child she carried. She beat on the man’s back with her uninjured hand, but it had no effect.
    Apparently he carried women through the jungle on a routine basis because he didn’t seem to tire on the way down the mountain. She might have weighed next to nothing.
    After what seemed like forever, and it seemed her head would explode from being held upside down, they came to a road. A Jeep sat idling and the man wrenched open the door, tossing her inside. She immediately scrambled for the other side, grabbing for the door handle. But a stocky man appeared on the other side, opening the door and sliding in beside her. She was pinned between the man who’d brought her and this other man, who stank of unwashed body and cigarette smoke.
    She turned to the man again. “Please. You have to listen to me. I’m not being held. I wasn’t kidnapped. I’m here because I want to be here. You have to let me go.”
    He looked down at her. “You’re dirty, you’re